the munchkin wrangler.

Quinn received his United States passport in the mail yesterday. It's kind of odd to have a regular passport for an infant, picture and all...in Germany, they just add kids under the age of 14 to the parents' passports. Apparently, this is one of the few areas where the U.S. out-bureaucratizes the land of Ordnung.

His passport is no different from mine, right down to the whole "Not Valid Unless Signed" moniker under the signature field. How am I going to have a seven-month old infant sign his own passport, I wonder?

Posted by Marko at 1:05 PM | 4 comments    

A cynical person might think that Mayor Nagin's whining about re-opening New Orleans for its residents is a desperate appeal for his voter base and his tax base to return, so he won't be mayor of a bunch of moldy houses without inhabitants...which would mean that he'd actually go and find a job outside of "civil service". Terrifying thought.

Posted by Marko at 9:11 AM | 0 comments    

The infant Benadryl knocked his little butt out last night. He got a dose after dinner, and he crashed hard without saying so much as peep until seven in the morning. Hooray for Benadryl, I say.

Daddy is not feeling so hot today. Looks like mommy passed her bug from work on to the boys. I’m loaded up on DayQuil and some other stuff today, and I’ve had the hardest time keeping up with the munchkin, who requires a change in activity every ten or fifteen minutes.

Fall’s here, finally. Now I’m looking forward to some mild days so I can take the kid out to the park in his new stroller. Also, it’ll be nice to be able to wear a sport coat again, which is a much more stylish concealment solution than an unbuttoned shirt or a vest.

Speaking of vests, I happen to own a khaki 5.11 “tactical” vest, which is very handy with all the pockets and whatnot. Problem is, I can’t wear it with my khakis, lest I look like a boy scout, and even with jeans it looks like I’m going fishing or gearing up for a photo safari.

One of Tamara’s cow-orkers has come up with an idea to turn the overly tactical 5.11 vest into something a little more neutral, and I think I’ll give that a shot.

Posted by Marko at 4:42 PM | 1 comments    

Today on the Munchkin Wrangler: a real-time account of our day.  It's not all sitting on the couch and watching Oprah...

5:58AM:  The Duck of Dread is jingling in his room.  I invoke the "before 7AM rule", which states that any noises before 7AM will be ignored, unless he starts crying, in which case he gets a bottle before going back to bed.  He makes muffled noises for about five minutes before going back to sleep.

7:44AM:  He's awake again, and shaking the ducky.  Time to get up, I suppose.  I stage his bottle and heat up my tea.  He's happy to see me, as usual, and we proceed to have our morning beverages...he's sucking on his bottle while I'm sipping my tea.  After breakfast, it's changing time...out of the PJs, diaper change, and into a daytime onesie.  The munchkin is transferred to the buzzy chair in the living room, so daddy can start typing up stuff and finish his tea.  Baby doesn't seem to care much for Matt Lauer or Katie Couric.  He's a little fussy this morning, possibly due to a mild cold...he has a stuffy nose.    

8:20AM:  Looks like Quinn caught mommy’s bug.  His nose is runny, and he coughs occasionally.  I give him a dropper of Baby Tylenol and leave a message for the pediatric nurse over at the doctor’s office.

8:35AM:  Transfer to the bed in our master bedroom for some playing with daddy and tummy time.  He’s definitely acting off today…sneezing, stuffy head, and mucus running from his nose when he sneezes.  Looks like daddy is in for a fun day.

9:00AM:  Back in the living room, playtime on the turtle gym on the carpet.  He’s a little more his usual self now.

9:30AM:  Poopy diaper change, transfer to the Exersaucer.  Pediatric nurse calls back and advises over-the-counter Pediacare, so I guess I’ll be running out to CVS to get some in a little while.  Warming up a bottle for his 10AM feeding/naptime.

10:11AM:  Bottle is administered, munchkin is down for the first nap of the day.  Daddy gets to get dressed and clean the kitchen while Quinn decides whether he actually wants to snooze off, or jingle the ducky around instead.

11:06AM:  Kitchen clean, munchkin awake.  He’s watching Baby Einstein right now while daddy is finishing up the dishes and milk bottles.  My corner of the living room has a faint dog pee smell to it; foul play is suspected.  I’ll need to mop the floor in the living room shortly.  The doggies are outside…I’m making them enjoy the fall weather, instead of hanging around on the furniture all day.

11:43AM:  Show’s over.  That will cap his TV intake for the day…he watches a 30-minute Baby Einstein DVD every other day or so, and mommy will occasionally keep the TV on while feeding him dinner so he’ll keep his head pointed in one direction long enough to shovel in a meal.  
He’s playing on the living room floor right now, where I’ll be joining him momentarily for a game of Crawl Towards The Jingling Toy.

11:51AM:  Being on the floor with Quinn enabled me to locate the source of the pee smell.  Apparently, my nose is bionic…the source is a lake of canine liquid waste deposited discreetly under the folding table by the kitchen window.  Cleanup in progress.  If the sweethearts weren’t all outside right now already, I’d boot them into the yard quicker than you can say “floppy-eared little savages.”

12:13PM:  Feeding in progress.  On the menu: a five-ounce bottle of Cream of Mommy, and a cup of YoBaby vanilla yogurt.

12:46PM:  Playing in the living room.  Daddy shows Quinn how to wave “hello” and “bye-bye”.  Quinn stares at daddy’s hand, mesmerized, and then squeals and stretches out his own hands as if to say, “Let me have a look at that wiggling thing.”  He is quite obviously a child prodigy.

1:53PM:  Heating up a bottle for the pre-nap meal.  Spent the last hour evenly split between living room carpet and master bedroom, engaging in important activities such as Crawling Towards Things We Want To Mouth, and Trying To Roll Off The Bed.  After this bottle, it’s nap time again.

3:09PM:  Munchkin still asleep, but he’ll wake up in the next ten minutes…the kid is so accurate with his nap durations, you could use him as an egg timer.  Dash to CVS netted PediaCare drops and plug-in vapor inhaler.  

4:05PM:  Fed the munchkin, and put him in his Exersaucer.  He still sounds stuffy, and he coughs on occasion, so I’m giving him a dropper of infant antihistamine.  Mommy is on the way home, and the dogs are whining outside because it’s getting close to feeding time.  I’m coming down with something as well, so I guess I’ll be drugging myself before bedtime to stave off the worst of it.

5:24PM:  Mommy is home and playing with Quinn on the bed, and we’re getting ready for dinner.  If he wakes up again at 8PM (like he has been doing the last few days), he’ll get the doctor-recommended dose of Benadryl to help him unclog his nose and go to sleep.  

6:54PM:  Quinn is down, after half a dinner (he didn’t want his bottle), and a dose of Benadryl.  He’s not even putting up a struggle tonight, and we hope that the Benadryl is going to keep him down for the night.  

This schedule is pretty typical...he takes up most of my attention from the time he’s awake until the time he finally falls asleep for the night.

Posted by Marko at 8:05 AM | 1 comments    

I usually call my brother in Germany every two weeks to catch up on family news and chat.

Today, he put my 3-year-old niece Nele on the phone, so she could tell me about the latest happenings in Neleworld. She informed me that she had a visit from the Schnullerfee (binky fairy), who took something, presumably the binky. Luck would have it that the binky fairy lived up to her side of the bargain, since she left a popcorn maker in trade.

I told Nele that I considered that to be a good swap, and she agreed.

Quinn never got used to a binky, so the binky fairy will skip a visit at our house. My brother Frank pointed out that he'll at least get visited by the tooth fairy.

Posted by Marko at 2:34 PM | 0 comments    

I put the munchkin down for his morning nap almost 45 minutes ago, and I can still hear him over the baby monitor, talking to his ducky and jingling it around.

"Bah dah dah..." *jingle* "Gah bah dya..." *jingle*

As he's getting older and more active, he's getting more and more resistant to naps and sleeptime. There's just so much interesting stuff to see that napping just doesn't hold as much appeal as looking around and talking to things. He's a little learning machine...everything is interesting, and you can just about hear the little gears grinding in his noggin as he tries to figure things out. When you talk to him, his eyes will stay glued to your lips as he's concentrating on how exactly you produce all those sounds. It's quite amazing to see human development up close and first hand.

Last night he woke up four times between 8 and 12PM, which is unusual. Every time, I came and comforted him briefly, and he went back to sleep without much trouble. There are very few things that feel as primal and satisfying as having an infant fall asleep on your chest...it makes you feel very important.

Posted by Marko at 9:30 AM | 0 comments    

After our Presidential elections in both 2000 and 2004, I had to listen to a lot of ridicule from my German friends and family. They were greatly amused at the closeness of the outcome of both races, and the legal wrangling that followed the 2000 "hanging chad" recount debacle.

Well, Germany just had parliamentary elections, and the result is such a close race that neither major party can yet claim victory, because none of them have the necessary majority in the Bundestag to either elect a chancellor, or make public policy. The current chancellor and his challenger are both claiming victory and "a clear mandate to govern", neither is willing to make concessions, and the result is projected to be a long and drawn-out fight. They may even have to do the elections all over, something that we just can't do as easily over here.

Incidentally, while the Federal Republic of Germany is not yet aware of the fact that I am no longer a citizen (I lost the German citizenship automatically when I became a naturalized American), this was the first German Federal election since my 18th birthday in which I was not allowed to cast a vote.  I do not find this fact regretful, since I no longer have much of a personal stake in Germany’s fate, but it was an interesting realization.

With all the America-bashing going on in Europe, the number one target country for emigration among Germans is still the United States. According to a recent study, some ten thousand Germans emigrated to the U.S. last year alone, more than to any other country in the world. That's pretty interesting, when one considers that the United States has very stringent immigration requirements, and that Germans can live and work in any European Union member country without visas.

I have lost track of the number of coffeehouse Trotskyists I've met in this country who think that the Social Democrat workers' paradises of Europe are so much more enlightened and desirable than our cold-hearted capitalism.  ("They get six weeks of paid vacation every year, and free health care!") Many of the Europeans in those selfsame countries are sick and tired of $4-a-gallon gasoline, value added taxes close to 20%, and 50%-plus income taxes, all necessary to finance all that "free" health care and the government-guaranteed retirement benefits.

I've been on both sides, and I can tell you from experience that the grass on this side is not only greener, but tastier and far less costly.    

Posted by Marko at 11:45 AM | 0 comments    

In the process of rearranging the house, which is something we tend to do every few months to shake things up, I briefly switched from my Model M to the sleek, black-and-silver HP Multimedia keyboard I got with the PC originally. It did look kind of nice on my desk, matching all the other hardware perfectly, and I sat back and enjoyed my harmonious, color-coordinated desk briefly.

Then I typed up one email and two posts on The Firing Line, and my typing rate was cut in half due to the fact that I constantly had to backspace or mouse back and correct numerous typos, mostly missing letters and un-capitalized capitals. I promptly unplugged the Pretty Keyboard, and hauled the Heavy Ugly Keyboard back onto the desk.

I've come to realize just exactly why the Model M offers a superior typing experience, and why I can't get used to anything else anymore (although I can tolerate a decent scissors-switch 'board like those on the G3 Powerbooks.) The buckling-spring keys give you not only excellent tactile feedback (they have just the right resistance so you won't bottom out the key while the finger is still in full motion), but also auditory feedback (the clicking sound you hear twice per keypress, once when the key is pressed, and once when it's released.) Your mind gets used to the clicking staccato to the point where you subconsciously pick up when you missed a key, so you're on the backspace key and then back in the groove without a conscious mental effort. With the rubber dome keyboards you get nowadays, you have no auditory feedback, and only very mushy tactile feedback when the key gets pressed.

It's not the prettiest of desk accoutrements, but it gets the job done better than anything else, and function beats form when it comes down to it.

Posted by Marko at 9:32 AM | 1 comments    

Quinn took his first fall today...fell off the bed while rolling around. I was paying attention to Robin for just a moment, and neither of us was watching him for just a few seconds, which was all it took for him to do a kamikaze commando roll off the side of the bed.

*thunk*

One-one thousand, two-one thousand...

"WAAAAAAAAAAA!"

He got over it pretty quickly, from crying to sniffles to smiles in a minute or so, but we still felt like horrible parents.

But I suppose that this was just the first of a great many falls he will suffer in life, and we may not always be around to console him when he knocks his head.

Posted by Marko at 10:52 AM | 2 comments    

My friend Mark clued me in to the short-lived TV series Firefly, which had completely managed to slip underneath my radar when it originally aired. At his incessant pimping, we ordered the complete DVD collection from amazon.com and finally had the time to start watching it this weekend. Our unanimous rating: two thumbs way up. Libertarian science fiction...who'da thunk I'd like that?

Posted by Marko at 11:08 PM | 0 comments    

I'm pretty immersed in the computer geek culture, which will probably come as a shock to many.

An interesting phenomenon is the equal distribution of regular versus "power users" in both the computer and gun communities.

My PC is a Pentium 4 running at 2.8GHz, with 1GB of RAM, and an nVidia GeForce 6600GT video card. That's a very good system, and better for its main purpose (gaming) than the vast majority of mainstream user desktop PCs out there. For a hardcore gamer ("power user"), my system is merely adequate. My video card would be considered just a step above the acceptable minimum for these folks, many of whom have graphics boards that cost $400-600, as much as an entire entry-level desktop system.

The power users/hardcore gamers make up a very small fraction of the computer-using community, way less than 5%, and closer to 1% or 2%.

My handguns are S&W M10 revolvers, and I have a competent selection of holsters and accessories for these guns. I shoot about 300-400 rounds a month, and I am pretty good with this setup. I would wager a guess that I can shoot better than a great number of "mainstream gun users, most of whom have a basic pistol or snubnose wheelgun which they shoot four times a year. For a power user, a tactically-involved armed professional or competitive shooter, my battery of guns is adequate, but hardly optimal, since I lack either capacity, reload speed, or bolt-on gadgetry (depending on which group you ask.)

The power users/competitive shooters/tactical teddies make up a very small fraction of the gun-using community, way less than 5%, and closer to 1% or 2%.

One thing you do acquire with experience in both fields is what works, what doesn't, and what constitutes "plenty good enough to do the job." Both my computer setup and my gun setup represent capable equipment that hits the price/performance sweet spot. I could spend a lot more on equipment without getting a commensurate increase in performance or enjoyment.

Posted by Marko at 10:03 AM | 1 comments    

Funny things have been happening to my gun trade reflex lately.

The other day, I was looking at the Romak AK clones at the gunshop, and for the briefest and most fleeting moment, I had a desire to drag in my Yugo SKS on a trade for one. But then the rational faculties kicked in, and I realized with amazing clarity that I'd much rather keep my SKS. I mean, detachable 30-round magazines are nice, but the Yugo SKS has a better stock length of pull, better accuracy (although both SKS and AK are not exactly match grade), and the fixed ten-round magazine is less in the way while shooting prone (and just as quick to reload.) Also, the SKS is actually machined steel, not stamped sheet steel, and it doesn't look like it was put together by epileptic Romanian dwarves with fine motor skill deficiencies.

The same thing happened when I looked at the new FN HP, and the new S&W 357Sc, the Scandium flyweight .41 Magnum. My first impulse was to kick off a trade, but reason kicked in immediately, and I asked myself, "What do these things do that my Model 10s don't do just as good, or better?"

Agh. I must be growing up, or something.

Posted by Marko at 7:24 PM | 0 comments    

Quinn is up on his hands and knees now, and he's trying hard to figure out the whole crawling thing. I figure I have another month or two before the munchkin has the ability to cruise with the dachshunds and get himself into some real trouble around the house.

He's growing more and more active and alert. You can start to see a little person peeking out now, whereas for his first few months he was basically a cute little slug with a noisy end and a messy end.

Posted by Marko at 11:11 AM | 1 comments    

One of my stay-at-home-dad pet peeves is the attitude of many women towards caretaker dads. You always hear about the glass ceiling and the obstacles women have to face in this male-dominated world, but I am here to tell you that women can stereotype, belittle, and discriminate just as well as the good ol' boys.

Several experiences come to mind. I have lost count of the nomber of women I have encountered who have asked Quinn, "Do you get to spend some time with daddy today?", or "Is daddy babysitting?" They always look quite astonished when I clarify that he gets to spend every day with daddy, and that mommy is the one working out of the house. I have the feeling that a lot of mothers consider a nurturing dad as a threat to what has been almost exclusively a female domain.

Then there's the more unpleasant kind of discrimination.

A few weeks back, I was at a bookstore with Quinn, browsing through the kiddie section. There was another woman there with two little kids, and when she saw me perusing the shelves, she (very subtly) herded her kids away from me. Never mind the six-month old boy in my company...I was a male in an area where few adult males trod, unless they have sinister motives. It was a really sour turn of what until then had been a fairly pleasant and normal day.

Then there are the guys. For every man who's supportive of a caretaker dad, there are two or three who either think you're a wimp, or think you obviously lack the ability to be the primary breadwinner. To them, the child is a proof of your manhood and your achievements when you can show pictures of him to your buddies at work, but he greatly diminishes your masculinity when he's strapped to you in a baby sling.

But every once in a while, you run into another baby-toting dad somewhere, and you exchange a knowing glance and a courteous nod.

At the end of the day, I have the best job in the world. My commute is twenty-one feet, and I can go to work in my underwear if I want. I don't have a defined starting or quitting time, but my one customer is far more appreciative of my efforts than anyone for whom I have ever fixed a computer. Best of all, he thinks I'm all that and a bucket of chicken wings, and when I walk into his room and see him smiling at the sight of me, I can't think of a more worthy way to spend a workday.

Posted by Marko at 12:59 PM | 2 comments    

Comment spamming...argh.

Due to the mass of spam comments I've had the pleasure to delete, I am now forced to enable comments from registered members only. I hope that will put an end to it without having to resort to image verification.

Spammers of any variety ought to be strung up by their respective dangly bits. It's like opening residential doors at random and yelling in, "Hey! You wanna check out my gaming site?"

Posted by Marko at 4:11 PM | 0 comments    

While I share the general sentiment of Bill Whittle's essay on the post-Katrina state of affairs, I have to disagree with him on a crucial point.

He splits the world up into feelers and thinkers, and he naturally sorts his particular political leaning (conservatism) into the group of thinkers. The problem with that is that every single person with even a rudimentary political or philosophical thought in their head counts themselves in that group. I mean, if you quizzed Hilary Clinton or Ted Kennedy, they would agree with Bill's classification of the populace, and they would tell you with equal conviction that they are the thinkers, and the other side is the one prone to emotionalism and irrationality.

You see, both the conservatives and liberals of this great nation suffer from the same malady: selective application of logic. Both sides are equally prone to filtering evidence through their ideology, and only allowing through whatever does not contradict that ideology filter.

The war in Iraq is a splendid example of the right motives leading to the wrong course of action. Personally, I think that the decision-making circle of the Rumsfeld/Cheney/Wolfowitz cabal is the textbook example of groupthink, the psychological phenomenon in which a group of like-minded good people can make horrendously bad or irrational decisions, because each member of the group shapes his opinion based on what they believe to be the common consensus. Now we have a whole lot of retroactive justification for the invasion, and none of them fly with me. I would have preferred honesty from the start: give me the real reason, not the one you think I'll buy. I hate the flag-waving, dissent-squashing "my country right or wrong" hysteria displayed by the Reds almost as much as I hate the Blues and their "Bush is the source of all evil" politicizing of every bad thing happening to anyone in this country.

Now the hurricane is Bush's fault because he got us out of the Kyoto accords? Oh, please. If you can turn a natural disaster into political fingerpointing capital before the bodies are even counted, then maybe you ought to do the country a favor and move to Europe, where the "Bush is Satan" chorus is always welcoming new members. (Ironically enough, most of them would smack their mothers in the mouth for a shot at a Green Card.) I mean, if you're so convinced that the President is powerful and malevolent enough to have the climate do his bidding, then why on earth would you choose to remain under the thumb of such an evil genius?

Ah, but I also love it when the Conservatives attempt to represent themselves as the champions of reason and logic. The same crowd supports the War on Some Drugs, which has nothing to do with reason, and everything with emotion. They're also big fans of publically-funded expressions of faith and the legislating of religious tenets, viewpoints that are as far removed from reason as a veggieburger from a ground sirloin patty.

Sometimes I think that the Republicans and Democrats truly deserve to sit across the aisle from each other.

Posted by Marko at 12:50 PM | 1 comments    

I've often waxed poetic about the incomparable IBM Model M, but here's the one keyboard on the market that may be even more hardcore geek than the Great Clicky One. It's called "Das Keyboard". It's pitch-black, and all the keys are blank. That's right...no key labels.

This is the keyboard for serious touch-typists...or for arrogant supergeeks who enjoy looking down their noses at the office drones who still need a label on the key in order to know which one to peck. The main market for Das Keyboard are snobby turtleneck-and-goatee-wearing latte slurpers who feel the need for a physical representation of their status on the top of the geek food chain.

The only way to make that thing more elitist would be to come out with a Macintosh version.

And yes, I do want one.

Posted by Marko at 7:20 AM | 2 comments    

It never fails.

Every time I am out shooting the old three-inch Model 10 Smith at Coal Creek, someone will invariably stick their head into my stall and ask what I am shooting. Must be the big ragged holes the M10 leaves in the orange target centers. Also, folks are invariably surprised when they see that I'm shooting some old sixgun.

Yesterday, I had a nice conversation with an older gentleman who was complimenting me on my shooting. I told him that it really was the gun that shot so well, and that I was just holding it. He said that I was doing a good job holding it.

Ah, but that gun is an awesome shooter. I can work that finish-worn, twenty-year-old, unassuming little M10 better than most other guns I've owned. It's like it was made for my hands.

Posted by Marko at 8:52 PM | 2 comments    

My DSL connection has been somewhat laggy for the last day or so, making BF2 online sessions practically unplayable. I started a single-player game (which doesn't rely on connection speed), and found myself quickly becoming bored with blowing away the computer-controlled bots.

The knowledge that you're besting a machine is not nearly as satisfying as the knowledge that you're besting a live, actual human in a head-to-head skill contest. That's the problem with online games...they make their own single-player components utterly bland and pointless. It's the difference between a tender rack of fresh ribs, and the form-pressed ribs you can get in the frozen food section at Sam's Club.

I went to my alternate Sociology class last night, since I couldn't stomach the idea of listening to Kalvin Marx for an entire semester. I'm happy to report that the teacher of the alternate class is a vast improvement...while still obviously on the left end of the political spectrum (is there a Sociologist out there who isn't?), she's fairly entertaining and a whole lot less annoying.

Posted by Marko at 11:36 AM | 0 comments    

As I am figuring out more and more functions of Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks, I am slowly improving the design of my web page. The mouse-over text buttons are a simple and neat little touch, and they're easy enough to do.

I kept the design of my page deliberately minimalistic: white background, and lower-case Courier font. Sparse, edgy, look-how-artsy-I-am. In the past, I felt compelled to show my geek expertise with ridiculously complex templates, the kind of animated eye candy web designers term "dancing baloney". However, I have developed a personal trend towards minimalism, which manifests itself in such inconsequential and ridiculous ways as purchasing a wallet that only has precisely enough space for the three plastic cards I routinely use.

I even sold my box-o'-holsters, to facilitate standardization on the S&W K frame revolver as my carry gun. Before, I switched carry pieces almost daily and traded guns almost weekly, and as a result I have had to buy the same kind of leather over and over again. My local gun store can probably keep its sales staff paid for three months just on the money I have lost in trades just in the past year or so.

Posted by Marko at 10:34 AM | 2 comments